A number of communication applications are being embedded into the handheld communication devices including mobile phones, for example, Bluetooth and wireless local area network (WLAN) applications. Battery life is a concern for mobile phones that include such communication applications. For example, battery of a mobile phone incorporating WLAN application discharges in a few hours. Further, it limits the deployment and acceptability of WLAN in mobile phones. This problem would be accentuated when WLAN.11 standard is incorporated into mobile phones.
Conventional radio chips tackle this issue by saving power using an application sensitive power management module in the mobile phone that decides to switch the radio into an active mode or a deep sleep mode. For example, the power management module may put the radio in deep sleep mode between beacon receptions. However, there are other protocol conditions including listen mode, active reception and scan mode. In conventional approaches, the radio chip is not designed to extract the lowest power under such protocol conditions. There is a need to have an intelligent radio chip design that reduces power consumption under any protocol condition.